


6

by firepixel



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Coffee, F/F, Fluff, lapslock, vague as fuck actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8132000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firepixel/pseuds/firepixel
Summary: u, jaehee, coffee, the works (pun)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [ironic? soundtrack](https://youtu.be/TMN7evWGj68)

it starts with coffee dates.

it makes a lot of sense; she's busy, but she does get lunch breaks sometimes - it's natural for you to join her on one of these, in a small cafe you find she frequents when she is able to get out of the office building with its not-as-delicious-as-everyone-says cafeteria food. she says the caffeine helps keep her awake, and you take note of the cream cheese pastries she likes to get when she's having a particularly good day at work. your conversations in text are often centered around one of three things: the party, zen, or jumin's cat, so you're pleasantly surprised when your lunch hour talks over cappucino veer off into unexpected directions, into childhood anecdotes and the judo classes she suggests you take and her hesitant dreams for the future. her smiles are slightly apologetic when it's time for her to go back to work; you hope the picture of a funny sign you send to her on your way to your own office communicates how grateful you are that she made any time for you at all.

in short, your relationship is coffee.

her work hours get longer. you never really think about how regularly she texts you, same hour every night, until it's 11pm and you feel strangely empty, somehow incomplete. you know you've talked to everyone, checked up on every email from work, so it doesn't really hit you what's missing until your phone chimes with an incoming text. it's jaehee; her words are an apology and a lament about her workload and you read between the lines, read about stress and expectations and sleepless nights staying up in front of a computer screen. you don't mention it the next day - you read between the lines, but you don't color outside them, can't afford to color outside them, always keep your coffee cup filled just to the brim but never past it. your coffee does taste a little more bitter than usual, seeing the dark circles under her eyes, but you stir in another packet of sugar and she smiles just bright enough to distract.

one day, though, she can't make it. you get a text, hurried, apologetic as always, just as you reach the corner of the street where the coffee shop is. entering it without her feels wrong. you do anyway, get your coffee to go, hurriedly add a few pastries to your order as an afterthought. leaving feels even more wrong, but you chase the feeling away, stepping into the lobby of the office building you've only been in a few times before. they know jumin; by extension, they know jaehee, and finding her desk isn't as difficult as being told she's in a meeting you can't intrude in. you think about her exhaustion, about how your daily coffee dates make her smile just that touch wider, think about her skipping food and sleep, and it tastes bitter like burned roast in your mouth when you leave the cup and plastic bag of pastries on her desk and leave with your coffee cup feelings and plastic bag of regrets.

if your relationship is coffee, you wonder if this must be the bottom of the cup.

so when you knock on the door of her apartment late friday evening, on a day you made sure to bully jumin into taking his cat and his endless demands with him, on a day you know she's free - you take hot chocolate and takeout with you. you made sure it's the kind of sushi she likes; you made sure the hot chocolate has extra whipped cream, extra sweet. maybe you kind of hope it'll say for you things you don't quite know how to tell her yourself. by her wide eyes, you think she understands. it's hesitant; imperfect, you planned only this far but this far is enough when her face melts into a genuine smile and your heart melts just like the cream topping your drinks. your first kiss tastes like cocoa.

your relationship becomes chocolate-flavored sleepy kisses in the evenings after work, herbal tea in bed on sick days (her snuffles are adorable and jumin does not protest when you tell him she's not coming in to work until she's better. she tries to protest too, and comes back to work a day early, but you take what you're given) and wine on the rare nights you get to spend together eating a fancy meal like the mature working adults you are. there is something poetic in that, you think, something a lonely soul might write about while avoiding responsibilities, but you're content with this.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some extra fluff for this fic bc yall seem to like this one best out of all of mine ;o
> 
> loosely based on this:
> 
> "skies fall into the seas this morning  
> where the horizon is  
> the imaginary line i trace with a pencil  
> on the back of the note you left  
> before you went -  
> shading in the waves  
> on the back of "i love you"s  
> and cross-hatching leaves into  
> "i had fun last night".  
> (see you soon)  
> my coffee sits, untouched  
> upon the kitchen table;  
> it's long since cold but it's the thought  
> that counts - counts that you thought of me  
> when you made it."

the first time she stays over, you wake up with a profound sense of contentedness and loss. you knew she had to leave for work early, were expecting it, but maybe just a tiny bit expecting to wake up to see her off too. she has left you a cup of coffee, though, on the kitchen table, and it's still warm. what catches your eye is the piece of white paper it rests on. you read it as you sip on the coffee (the numerous cafe dates you had and her ever-observant nature means it's made just how you like it, down to the two and a half spoons of sugar), thumb swiping over the crisp black ink. you think of her at this very table, hair falling in her face as she writes this note to you (polite and sweet as always, telling you she's off for work, reminding you to eat and wishing you a good morning). you kind of wish you were there to see it, actually, as you make your way back to slip it into the top drawer of your table.

it does give you an idea - or maybe encouragement.  
you begin leaving notes for her, snippets of thoughts in words you can't really say out loud to her yet. you never were very good with saying things out loud. words, though, are easier, and you cover the backs of receipts she keeps in neat stacks on her table in ink, scribble in the margins of her to-do list. you think it's actually a pretty apt metaphor for your role in her life - you never share this thought with her, but perhaps she would agree. you fill the spaces in her life with your presence and the spaces in her paperwork with the cheap pen you keep in your pocket with its chewed-on cap often miraculously missing.

these notes, they become a habit. they're not really meant for her to see, per se; they're more like words you mean for her. there's a difference. you don't often think about what she thinks of your scribbles everywhere, because she never brings the topic up. sometimes, you even wonder if she notices them.

in your own private notebook you make a list of when she does. it goes like so:

  1. that one time you spent the entirety of the two hours she spent in a meeting drawing a giant cat monstrosity in the margins of a draft for some financial report she gave to jumin a week ago. the artwork was actually pretty remarkable, complete with about seventeen assorted legs and tails curling around the diagrams and numbers, sketched fur soft against the crisp precision of her words. you left it on her table when she finally walked out of the conference room, and promptly forgot about it. (that is, until you found it tacked up on the board above her desk the next week you visited.)
  2. that other time you spent one of your coffee dates pretending to work on a project. 'pretending' sounds unfair - you were, _really_ , trying to work on it and it was, _really_ , very important - but she was distracting you with the small smile she beamed at you anytime you made a quip and the locks of hair falling in her face and her warm eyes behind the glasses perched on her nose. as a result, most of your scribbles were less an outline for the extension of the project proposal and more comments in the vein of - _oh my god do you even know how cute you're being right now_ \- she caught a glimpse of that last one and you top-notch-stealthily yanked the paper towards you while she tried to read it upside down, a blush warming her cheeks and a bemused smile curving her lips.
  3. that one time you made joking additions to her shopping list with a red gel ink pen, cap between your teeth and a hip resting on the counter beside the fridge. you wrote things like " _approximately a dozen blankets for when jaehee falls asleep on the couch again; preferably fleece_ " and " _whipped cream for science about ~~three~~ ~~five~~ ten cans will do_ ", right underneath _butter_  and _detergent_ in her neat handwriting. after her next grocery run, though, you find three cans of whipped cream right next to the milk in your fridge with a neat taped up note (' _bad for you!! do not eat all at once_ '). you smear the whipped cream on her nose and lick the rest off the top of your hot chocolate as she tucks her legs into the fleecy spotted blanket she brought home.



so, there are notes you're sure she notices. there are others, though, she never actually mentions - the sleepy ' _i love you'_ s you scrawl onto the backs of the loose scraps of paper you find on the coffee table, the ' _your smile is as warm as the sun'_ neatly sandwiched into the notes on curtain colours you are making for her. sometimes, though, you wonder if the extra shy kisses she brushes to your neck when she rests her chin on your shoulder count as acknowledgement.

(you also find a box stuffed full of notes in the bottom drawer of her work desk when you're hunting for scissors. you put that one back carefully and don't mention it, but the smile she kisses off your face after work is extra bright that day.)

**Author's Note:**

> coffee actually makes me rly jittery and i think thats a good metaphor for someone you begin to have feelings for because 3am, anxious, awake, same difference?? man i should study for that exam tomorrow though


End file.
